The group that was putting pressure on the court included some very huge names in the technology market like Meta, Microsoft, and Twitter alongside some of Big Tech’s most outspoken critics that include Yelp and Electronic Frontier Foundation. Alongside all of them, Reddit and some of Reddit’s moderators who volunteered also got involved with the case.
The law that could potentially swerve this case in the favor of Big Tech is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that under this law all websites are protected and they are not to be held responsible for any third-party content that has been shared on their website and thus they are not to be subjected to any lawsuits over these posts.
But, the main question, in this case, is whether Google can be sued for their YouTube algorithm recommending pro-ISIS content to the users. But as we stated before this can be counteracted by Section 230, however, the plaintiffs of this case who are the family of a person who was killed in a 2015 ISIS attack in Paris, argued that their recommendation of such content makes them liable for a charge under a US antiterrorism law. But, the thing is that the algorithm just shows recommendations based on what the user has previously watched and that the algorithm is AI generated which technically does not know the rights and wrongs of society.
Reddit, which also got involved in this case stated in its filing that this case if it turns out to be in the plaintiff's favor, will pave the way for future lawsuits against non-algorithmic forms of recommendations and could lead to a targeted lawsuit against individual internet users.
Now, we should mention that Reddit is a platform that is entirely built around users recommending things to each other for mutual benefit and that could become a cause of potential propaganda lawsuits against particular individuals.
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
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